...and that they were "restored by the BFI in association with ITV Studios Global Entertainment and Park Circus Films".

The remaining 5 titles do not indicate a speed but are listed as "restored by the BFI National Archive in association with STUDIOCANAL)". I haven't seen the others, and so am unsure as to whether similar frame rates were used for the DCPs on those.

20fps seems pretty slow for 1927 silents, but in any case, as they're not 24fps, they should be 1080i, not 1080p. If they were 1080i, we wouldn't have every fifth frame duplicated, resulting in jerky-motion.

dede wrote:I just posted this on the Criterion website (on the Lodger article). Have any of their other silent discs had the same problem? Maybe it's a fault they'll correct?

Criterion only used the source given to them by BFI, so you probably should contact BFI. Sometimes Criterion does use 1080i, such as for the "People on Sunday" Blu-ray, but only when the source is that way.

As to the dreaded momentary freeze frame caused by duplicated frames when 1080p is used, sometimes I notice it and sometimes I don't. It may also have something to do with your monitor's refresh rate. A refresh rate of 60 Hz, which is what most TVs use, might make the momentary freezes more noticeable than a refresh rate of 24 Hz.

Except that article is incorrect; it IS noticeable in motion. Exhibit A: the subject of this thread, mastered by the publisher of the article you linked. I notice it every time there's a Blu-ray with duplicated frames, and I ain't the only one.. The only way around it is to use 1080i for speeds other than 24fps.

I can detect it in a couple of things, but most of the time I can't. It depends a lot on your monitor. I use an Epson projector and an Oppo player and they are very forgiving of this sort of thing. They might actually be correcting it by interlacing. I don't know.

It has nothing to do with hardware. Think in terms of audio, and imagine a single buzzing channel (or the loudness war). Incredibly, not everyone would notice the buzz unless it's pointed out to them. I would have great difficulty hearing past it.

When the repeat cycle is shorter, like every fourth or fifth, then yes, you won't always see the stutter. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won't, or sometimes you'll think your eyes are playing tricks. With glacially slow motion, such as in Siegfried, you won't consistently see it, though smoke, rain, and grain can make it more noticeable. This is the case with The Lodger. To check for yourself, just step frame-by-frame through the video while counting unique consecutive frames. Players and screens don't gloss over those repeats.

To put it in numbers, at 24fps one frame is 42ms. A stretched frame is doubled: 83ms. This is noticeable at any rate. When a frame is held for an extra field/frame at 60fps, it is a difference of 17ms, which is not noticeable (and is an acceptable amount of lag for most people who play video games). 60fps has the added benefit of being able to display 20fps exactly, unlike stuttered 24fps.

It can be hardware if there are different refresh rates or interlacing settings involved. The Oppo player is a swiss army knife when it comes to deinterlacing and interlacing. It's possible on auto settings it might be detecting the bump and doing something behind the scenes to correct it. I know that on my bedroom system (which is a cheap Korean TV and a budget blu-ray player) that the effect is more prominent than on my Oppo and projection system.

My copy of the Lodger is on its way. I'm betting it will be better overall than the UK version with the pop music.

How did they handle the Spanish version of The General that runs at 26 frames? That one looks super smooth. The only one that I really notice it is in The Black Pirate. The water lapping has a jitter in it. I can't think of any other examples that jumped out at me.

dede wrote:I just posted this on the Criterion website (on the Lodger article). Have any of their other silent discs had the same problem? Maybe it's a fault they'll correct?

Criterion only used the source given to them by BFI, so you probably should contact BFI. Sometimes Criterion does use 1080i, such as for the "People on Sunday" Blu-ray, but only when the source is that way.

As to the dreaded momentary freeze frame caused by duplicated frames when 1080p is used, sometimes I notice it and sometimes I don't. It may also have something to do with your monitor's refresh rate. A refresh rate of 60 Hz, which is what most TVs use, might make the momentary freezes more noticeable than a refresh rate of 24 Hz.

WaverBoy wrote:Exhibit A: the subject of this thread, mastered by the publisher of the article you linked.

So because Michael wrote it, it has to be biased ?

Nick_M wrote:To put it in numbers, at 24fps one frame is 42ms. A stretched frame is doubled: 83ms. This is noticeable at any rate.

But isn't the cycle repeat as much part of the equation ? It's not so much a question of how long these frames are but how they are incorporated within the flow.

We're talking about how a monitor or a player would compensate for these kind of things, but isn't the eye and the brain the best couple to adjust to this, providing it is cyclic enough ?

Nick_M wrote:When a frame is held for an extra field/frame at 60fps, it is a difference of 17ms, which is not noticeable (and is an acceptable amount of lag for most people who play video games). 60fps has the added benefit of being able to display 20fps exactly, unlike stuttered 24fps.

Wouldn't you have to triple every single frame to reproduce 20fps at 60fps ?That wouldn't seem like a good idea to me at all.

My theory is, if I see a problem I experiment with the settings to see if I can cure it. In this case, refresh rate, frame rate and interlacing settings are the ones I would experiment with. If I don't notice the problem, I don't worry about it.

tenia wrote:Wouldn't you have to triple every single frame to reproduce 20fps at 60fps ?That wouldn't seem like a good idea to me at all.

As long as each frame is held for (approximately) the same amount of time, then motion will be smooth and even. In this case, 1 frame at 20fps = 50ms and 3 frames at 60fps = 50ms. There isn't even some kind of pulldown pattern. You'd only see a difference if the screen flickered.

Unfortunately, you can't do 1080p/60Hz with a Blu-ray, so you are stuck with either 720p/60Hz (lower resolution), 1080i/60Hz (combing artifacts unless your scaler is very good) or 1080p/24Hz (repeat frames). The consensus is that 1080p/24Hz should be used whenever possible if the frames can be repeated in a less than jarring way. Using a repeat every 3rd, 4th or 5th frame is the best that we can do with today's economically viable technology.

Great Hierophant wrote:Unfortunately, you can't do 1080p/60Hz with a Blu-ray, so you are stuck with either 720p/60Hz (lower resolution), 1080i/60Hz (combing artifacts unless your scaler is very good) or 1080p/24Hz (repeat frames). The consensus is that 1080p/24Hz should be used whenever possible if the frames can be repeated in a less than jarring way. Using a repeat every 3rd, 4th or 5th frame is the best that we can do with today's economically viable technology.